[jstein]

Here is a question that I have been meaning to ask for awhile. Is it better to purchase a powerbook with an 5400rpm internal hard drvie or to purchase an external hard drive of 5400 or 7800rpm? What are the pro and cons of both set ups?

[Dr.Michael]

Originally posted by jstein:
Here is a question that I have been meaning to ask for awhile. Is it better to purchase a powerbook with an 5400rpm internal hard drvie or to purchase an external hard drive of 5400 or 7800rpm? What are the pro and cons of both set ups?

An internal HD for your Powerbook can never be fast enough. The HD is THE bottleneck in a Powerbook.

In the Alu-Powerbooks you can't replace the HD yourself without voiding the warranty. So its a good decision to buy them with a fast HD.

Externally you can use cheaper 3.5 inch drives with 7200 or even 10000rpm. Put them in a Firewire case (Lacie, Sarotech and many more) and you have several advantages:

1. You have a backup medium.
2. You can boot from the external drive
3. If you boot from the external firewire drive your Powerbook will be faster than you can get it with any available internal 2.5 inch HD.

Best is to have both. But don't waste your money for an exernal 2.5 inch drive unless you really need storage to carry around.
Does this answer your questions?

Michael

[jstein]

Thanks for the reply Michael,

With that said, I think I am going to go with an external hard drive. I have been studying Lacie for awhile and I like their products. Can you explain, the process of booting up from your external hard drive?

[Dr.Michael]

Originally posted by jstein:
Thanks for the reply Michael,

With that said, I think I am going to go with an external hard drive. I have been studying Lacie for awhile and I like their products. Can you explain, the process of booting up from your external hard drive?

Yes.

Install an OS on the drive or copy your internal drive with carbon copy cloner.

Then connect and switch on the disk, startup the Mac and hold the option key (alt). This will start the Macintosh bootmanager that shows all bootable drives. Just click on the desired drive and it will boot.

For permanent boot from the external drive select the drive in System Preferences->Startup Disk.

[jstein]

Originally posted by Dr.Michael:
Yes.

Install an OS on the drive or copy your internal drive with carbon copy cloner.

Then connect and switch on the disk, startup the Mac and hold the option key (alt). This will start the Macintosh bootmanager that shows all bootable drives. Just click on the desired drive and it will boot.

For permanent boot from the external drive select the drive in System Preferences->Startup Disk.

Thank You!

[Dr.Michael]

Originally posted by jstein:
Thank You!

Please report your experiences with the drive. There are few people who use external 3.5 inch drives. I posted a question about this some weeks ago and got few replies.

Find my monological report about Sarotech external cases here: